Xavier North (Délégué Général à la Langue Française et aux Langues de France): “The META-NET Network of Excellence provides an invaluable contribution to the development of a genuine European strategy in support to multilingualism, based on existing technologies while encouraging the development of new innovative technologies. This approach aims at a better understanding between citizens and community administrations, and will facilitate the recognition of linguistic diversity, at the national and regional levels, including in the overseas French territories.”

This Volume

The Series

Preface

This white paper is part of a series that promotes knowledge about language technology and its potential. It addresses journalists, politicians, language communities, educators and others. The availability and use of language technology in Europe vary between languages. Consequently, the actions that are required to further support research and development of language technologies also differ. The required actions depend on many factors, such as the complexity of a given language and the size of its community.

META-NET, a Network of Excellence funded by the European Commission, has conducted an analysis of current language resources and technologies in this white paper series. The analysis focused on the 23 official European languages as well as other important national and regional languages in Europe. The results of this analysis suggest that there are tremendous deficits in technology support and significant gaps in research for each language. The given detailed expert analysis and assessment of the current situation will help maximise the impact of additional research.

As of March 2012, META-NET consists of 54 research centres from 33 European countries. META-NET is working with stakeholders from economy (software companies, technology providers, users), government agencies, research organizations, non-governmental organizations, language communities and European universities. Together with these communities, META-NET is creating a common language technology vision and strategic research agenda for multilingual Europe 2020.